


unfortunate realities

by wonderbee (fernic)



Category: The Filthy Frank Show (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, Seizures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-07-29 06:11:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7673092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fernic/pseuds/wonderbee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian doesn’t know how it started, or what triggered it, but one second George is laughing and puffing out cigarette smoke into his face, so close Ian can taste his breath on his tongue (he wants to lean in), and the next he is stepping back and dropping to his knees and making a sound so pathetic and weak, like a small mouse getting stepped on, that Ian almost starts laughing.</p><p>And then George is shaking.</p><p>And the laughter dies in his throat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unfortunate realities

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Mia because she loves this ship and I love her.

George does stupid things.

It’s a fact, his entire damn youtube channel is proof- hell, his entire existence is proof - and Ian knows it, because he does stupid things too. And he gets it, they’re both stupid, have stupid friends and stupid ideas and do a lot of those stupid things, but they’re never _so_ bad.

(Except for Human Cake. That was very, very bad.)

But Ian knows they all have limits. They all have breaking points and they all know when to stop. 

He thought, at least.

Because here he is, standing above George, dubbed out in his Filthy Frank gear, and he’s having a seizure.

A _motherfucking seizure_.

|||

Ian doesn’t know how it started, or what triggered it, but one second George is laughing and puffing out cigarette smoke into his face, so close Ian can taste his breath on his tongue (he wants to lean in), and the next he is stepping back and dropping to his knees and making a sound so pathetic and weak, like a small mouse getting stepped on, that Ian almost starts laughing.

And then George is shaking.

And the laughter dies in his throat.

( _Stop thinking, stop watching, stop thinking about it it isn’t happening he’s joking he’s-_ )

And then George’s jaw is snapping shut and he’s falling to the ground, onto his back with his legs folded under him and he’s _shaking_ , limbs spazzing out and hitting the wall and the table where Max has jars of pickles laid out (don’t ask. Stupid Ideas, stupid things and stupid consequences).

It’s quiet, and Max is just looking down and everything stops, he thinks, goes in slow motion like moving through mud, and Ian can’t get down fast enough. The tile is hard against his knees and his skin burns because there’s spilled rice (don’t ask. Stupid ideas, stupid things, stupid consequences) on the floor, digging into his skin and making him grit his teeth.

“What the fuck. What the fuck,” Max is saying, and Ian doesn’t know what to do. George stops shaking, and he’s just lying down on the ground, panting and staring up at the ceiling. Ian can see him swallow, the way his throat bobs and his mouth opens after. Ian looks up at Max, who has the camera in his hands.

“What the hell!” Ian yells, and Max drops the camera.

“I’m trying to shut it off, fucker!” he screams, and Ian can hear how thick his voice is. Max finally shuts the camera off, and Ian turns back to George, who is just lying there, looking up at the ceiling and not moving, just breathing and swallowing and staring. Ian can feel something burning behind his eyes, and he doesn’t know what to do. He already wants to cry because this challenge is fucking stupid, he doesn’t want to chug pickle juice and he doesn’t want to cook some fucked up rice recipe and he doesn’t want to have to watch his friend have a seizure in front of him but it all happened, it’s still happening, and he doesn’t fucking know what to do.

“I’m calling the police, or some shit, okay?” Max says, and Ian just nods, stays on his knees even though the uncooked rice is digging into his skin so hard he has to grind his teeth to stop himself from getting up. He doesn’t know why, but he wants to be close, close so George doesn’t feel alone while he’s doing whatever he’s doing. It’s stupid, he knows it is, but he also knows that his life so far has been full of stupid thinking and stupid actions so he might as well keep rolling with it.

“Hey, I’m right here, okay?” he says, and he sees George swallow, blink, stare. Ian wants to reach out but he doesn’t know if he’ll trigger anything, so he takes his sweatshirt from where it’s tied around his waist and slowly, gently, lifts George's head.

There’s another sound, a gargle and a groan mixed into one, and Ian can hear Max talking on the phone, cursing and pulling his hair and saying please, please come he was shaking real bad and he won’t talk or move and please, he needs help, _please_.

There are others in the house, and Ian stays where he is, kneeling when Chad comes into the room, followed by the others and they look at George, eyes widening and Ian wants to hit someone right now.

George makes that sound again, and Ian just stares at them.

“I don’t,” he starts, but he can’t finish. There are so many things to fit into that sentence, but he can’t say it. _I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to say, I don’t know how I can look at him like this, I don’t know why this hurts so fucking much, I don’t know._

“Fucking cunt, he might throw up and _die_ ,” Chad says, and Ian watches as Chad lifts George up and pushes him onto his side. George lets out another groan, his eyes still staring straight ahead, drool dripping out of his mouth and over his chin. Ian knows it's gross, but he’s done worse, much worse, and so he leans forward and wipes the spit with the heel of his hand. 

Max is off the phone, and Chad is talking to him, maybe to both of them but Ian isn't listening because George is making that noise again, the one he made when he first started shaking, and Ian worried that he’s going to start again, start seizing again.

And then, like Ian wished it not to happen, it does, and George is shaking on his side, making a long, drawn out _uh_ sound. It's like when he was a kid, driving along a bumpy road and listening to his voice become all uneven and bumpy, the way he found it so funny he would laugh longer than he should have. It's not funny anymore, and Ian doesn't think he’ll ever be able to hear a sound like that again without wanting to throw up.

He’s flopping around like a fish out of water when Ian hears the sirens, loud and obnoxious, singing into his ears outside of the house. Max runs to the door, and Chad gets up, and the other guys step back. Ian is still on his knees, still feeling the rice cut into his knees, and he’s pretty sure he’s bleeding but it doesn’t matter because George is having a seizure right in front of him and he can’t do anything about it.

A woman and a man, both wearing matching uniforms and carrying a stretcher and some weird helmet type thing with padding, come forward. Ian steps away, stumbles back into the wall and watches as they hold him down and push the helmet over his head.

And the rest is a blur, both of them just watching as George shakes, waiting for him to stop before they roll him over onto the stretcher, and the woman is leaning down, speaking in his ear and asking him if he can blink, once for yes, twice for no. George is making noises and blinking, once, twice, once, twice, and Ian is watching as they take him away until the door shuts and Max is shaking his shoulder and telling him to get in the fucking car, and Ian is walking, not feeling the ground beneath his feet and not paying attention to how fast Max is driving, just sitting and watching and trying to figure how things could go so wrong so fast.

|||

His tongue felt heavy, and that’s how it starts, he thinks.

His tongue felt heavy and there was a buzz in the back of his head, and itch he couldn’t place, and the drag from the cigarette sure as hell didn’t do anything to help. He leans into Ian and blows it in his face and smiles, but it’s not like he can see with the smoke in his face.

And he knows it’s going to happen before it does, and it’s too late to warn anyone, because he’s choking on smoke and dropping to his knees and he can’t feel anything, his mind is going haywire, spazzing and signalling everything to move and it’s exhausting, and he checks out before he hits the ground.

Because it works like this: he’s there, but he also isn’t there. He can’t move and he can’t think and he can’t do anything, just lay there and blinks once or twice and he knows he’s being carried off to the hospital, where an uncomfortable bed and a hefty bill will be waiting, and he’s so tired so he closes his eyes as soon as they slip the oxygen mask over his face.

|||

Ian knows he isn’t in a stupid romance drama, or whatever.

He has a life, he has shit to do, and he isn’t going to stop everything just because his friend had a seizure. Yeah, he cares (a lot), but it hurts more than it should to see him knocked out in a hospital bed. So he sees them set him up, sticking the IV in his arm and clipping some weird clip on his finger, which makes the machine next to him beep, slowly and steady. The doctor talks to him, asks him to call a family member, and Ian is embarrassed to say that he doesn’t _know_ any immediate family member he can call, that George doesn’t talk about his home life and Ian doesn’t ask, because he kinda gets it.

So he sits and he watches the whole process, fills out a medical information form with Max to the best of his ability (has the patient had seizures before? Yes. Have you seen patient have seizures before? No, and I never want to again), and sets his phone number as the number to call if anything happens. It takes a while, and by the end there are still some empty squares on the sheet, but the nurse takes it anyway, and then asks them to leave the room.

“He needs to rest before we can treat him,” she says, and she smiles, as if this is simple procedure and Ian didn’t just experience what he thinks is the worst thing in his entire life.

Ian doesn't know what they do, if they just wait for him to wake up or scan his brain or something, but he knows that he wants to get his mind off of it. He has band-aids all over his knees now, covering scratches and cuts he got from kneeling on the rice during the whole ordeal, and Max is still shaking a bit. Ian offers to drive this time, and Max accepts.

They clean the house, mop off the rice and pretend the blood from Ian's knees isn't there, pretends the cigarette that George (don't think about him shut _up_ ) dropped from his fingers isn't still burning and making an ash pile on the ground, pretends the camera lens isn't cracked because Max dropped it while turning it off.

They clean, put the pickles away and Ian takes out the trash, and watches from the window as Max takes the SD card out of the camera and smashes it with a hammer outside. 

His phone vibrates in his pocket, and Ian almost doesn't want to answer it, but he does and it's a woman speaking into the phone, telling him that yes, George Miller has woken up and is being treated and do you have his insurance information?

Ian walks to the car with Max without another word, and he doesn't look down as he hears the crunch of the memory card beneath his sneakers.

|||

Back in the hospital, the only significant change is that George now has his eyes open and is yawning into his hand. He’s still lying down, playing with the clip on his finger, and he tries to sit up when Ian and Max enter the room. 

“You fucking cunt,” Max says, and Ian tries to smile, he really does, but he can't force his lips to tug up and George must see it, because he smiles instead.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. His voice is rough and heavy, more than usual, and Ian just lets Max step in front of him.

“Ruined our footage, so thanks for that,” he says, but he gives George a high five, and his hands are still shaking, and George sees it, Ian knows he does because he just looks away and plays with his finger clip again.

“Yeah, I'm really shitty,” he mumbles, and he looks up again. “I'm sorry.”

Max shrugs and sits in a chair. Ian finally managed to put a smile on his face and just says, “it's whatever.”

They sit in silence for a while. Max gets a call, and steps outside, and Ian feels the space get quieter, smaller, and yet it's still like George is a whole world away instead of sitting in the bed a mere three feet from him.

It's bare in the hospital room, the only color being the muted television and the colors that dance on the monitor beside the bed. There's an orange juice carton on a tray on his bed, and George takes a sip out of it with a straw.

“I feel like a fucking baby. They won't let me drink this without a straw. And they don't even give me a bendy straw. This place is no fun,” George finally says, and Ian shrugs.

“Hospitals aren't supposed to be fun,” he says, and then he adds, “next time you have a seizure in the middle of a video, I'll be sure to remember to bring you some bendy straws.”

“Har har,” George says, and Ian laughs a little bit. It's quiet for a bit, just George drinking his orange juice through his straw that isn't bendy, and Ian just watching him and wishing more than anything that he was somewhere else, that they both were.

“I thought you were over the whole seizure thing,” he finally says. It's quiet, a stilling silence, and he can hear Max talking outside, can hear carts being pushed and doors clicking shut and footsteps across the halls.

“Yeah, I thought so too,” George says, and his voice breaks, something that Ian has never heard before, because all he knows about George is that he laughs, he laughs and he never cries over anything that isn't intense pain, and he thinks that maybe that's just it. This hurts him, maybe, hurts a lot and Ian gets up, walks to the bed and pushes his hand into George’s and smiles.

“Well, at least you aren't dead,” he says, and George just rolls his eyes and closes them.

“Don't count on it.”

“I won't,” Ian says, and George twists his hand a little, taking Ian’s hand with him, holding it and shaking it before he taps his finger against Ian's palm and lets go.

“I'll be fine,” he says, and Ian nods.

He knows.

**Author's Note:**

> idk this is the first jojian thing I've written and I really likes writing it, though it was hard because they're real people and i find it really hard to ship real people and write about them because of other ships that have been ruined... but yeah i hope you enjoyed this, and I'll try to write something more?


End file.
